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JN: Can you share some of your personal stories and memories about the camps, good or bad, either?

LK: In Manzanar, I can remember a couple of things. It was all dusty and hot. And I realize now that the barracks were not complete -- well, even if they completed them they probably didn't get much better -- but it was, it was dusty and hot. And one instance that I remember -- well, but there was a creek, and I remember going to the creek. It was just inside the barbed wire fence, and I could remember going to play at the creek and seeing the tower with the soldier up at the top with a gun. And another time was when they had baseball games, and I think my sister got hit, a thrown bat hit her. And that was traumatic, 'cause it hit her on the head, I think. And then another time, they had movies that they showed outside. And it was sort of in a... well, it was like an amphitheater, but you sat on the ground, and it was outside. And that was sort of exciting, 'cause I'd never been to a movie outside. But I took... and I can't remember if it was a movie or some event was there, and I was in charge of my brother Frank. And so we were sitting in this crowd on the ground and a dust storm came up, and everybody got up to leave. And so everybody was swarming to go back to their barracks and I remember just being surrounded by bodies and holding onto Frank's hand and being scared. And to this day, I do not like crowds, when they're jostling me, and I relate it and attribute it to that time. But, see, those were all kind of related to fun things that were part of the camp experience. And then I remember being afraid of scorpions, 'cause we were told so much to be careful of scorpions. Oh, and then another thing about camp, in Manzanar, was there was a dietician, I think, there. And the children sat at a separate table and they served... and she wanted us to clean and eat everything. And they had cottage cheese and I took one bite and I did not like it, and so I just sat there and she wouldn't let me leave until I finished it. And I think I, I out-waited her... I'm trying to remember. [Laughs] But I remember being really stubborn and my mother telling me... it's funny how things stick with you, I'm still considered stubborn, I think. My mother saying that I should just... she came to look for me 'cause I wasn't coming home. But I eat cottage cheese today, so I... but I didn't, I refused to eat it then.

JN: But your mom didn't tell the dietician that it's okay if you didn't eat it?

LK: I don't know, I have no idea. But, so, and I can't remember exactly, but I remember being just really stubborn and sitting there refusing to eat at all.

JN: What about Minidoka? Was this at Manzanar or Minidoka?

LK: This was at Manzanar. Now, Minidoka was the same except that in the wintertime it got really cold and then... and I was in, I was responsible for my sister Frances to walk her to, with her when we went to school and back. And she had to stay after school a lot of times, and so I had to wait for her and all my friends got to go home, go ahead of me, and I remember begrudging Frances that. And then I must have also had to take, watch Frank. Because we were walking home from somewhere and he got -- when the rains came and stopped, the paths were really muddy -- and he got stuck in the mud and I couldn't get him out. And so then I panicked and I think Frank relates this story, too. But anyway, I think I was... what I begrudge is being the oldest sister, I think, of all these things. [Laughs] But... anyway, he must have gotten out of the mud hole, but I remember that. I think the climate was what I remember most, the extreme heat and extreme cold. But otherwise we played, as children do, anywhere. It really isn't 'til after coming home, and ten years after the experience where I have all these stories about discrimination and things that were bothersome to me, not actually during internment or leading up to it. Either I don't remember or it didn't affect me as much as it... well, because I was adolescent by then. That affects a person, I think, more than when they're grade schoolers.

JN: But you did have that sense of being the oldest sister and having to take care, and when there was danger, it was amplified.

LK: Right. I still do. [Laughs] I think it never goes away.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.